NEVER AGAIN ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ‘christian prejudice’ has been a tragic-precursor of Holocaust

This post aims at the self-appropriation of the every catholic to become aware of the inherent anti-Semitism in the History of the Catholic Church. It discusses the Christian anti-Semitism and its brutal effect in the World War II – Holocaust.

Brutality of Nazi Regime

Holocaust, the deliberate killing of the people who Nazis thought had no right to live mostly Jews, is a well known event of the World War II. It sends shivers down our spine as it reminds us of the ‘inhuman’ and ‘brutal’ treatment of human beings like us. Between 1939 and 1945 Nazis evolved multiple methods to exterminate Jews from the earth. It set up special group of police called ‘Einsatzgruppen’ to carry out the ordeal of killing Jews. 

The police usually forced Jews to dig a pit and then shot them into it. Later they built Gas-Vans that killed people as it carried them to the drench. Gassing thereafter was adapted one of the quick solution for the extermination of Jews. Thus, they built six Concentration Camps for the purpose of carrying out mass murders of Jews deported from the ghettos and the other parts of Europe, either by shooting or gassing. All the camps were based in Poland at Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka. Some died due to starvation and exhaustion. Initially the Jews were confined to ‘Ghettos’, a place where Jews and other people who were regarded as parasites, were secluded from other people. It was simply, a habitat of dehumanization. More than a million Jews have died in the ghettos due to lack of food, water, space and sanitation. Babi Yar massacre (September 1941, in Kiev, Ukraine), Iasi massacre (June 1941, in Iasi, Romania) and Odessa massacre (late 1941, in Odessa, Transnistria) which gunned down 33771, 14000, and 40000 Jews respectively within a question of two or more days haunts us as nightmares. At the end of the war, they had killed more than 6 million Jews and half a million Romanians apart from other casualties. 

Anti-Semitism in the Medieval Church

Such an anti-Semitism that brutally vandalized Jews of their dignity and life did not occur overnight. It has a shocking-long-history.  Jews originally lived in the Middle East. When Romans overpowered them in 70 CE, most of them were deported to Rome and others fled to Babylonia and Europe as refugees. They flourished when the major part of the Europe was under Muslim rule. But in the middle ages, (C. 11 century CE) with Christianity gaining popularity the hatred of Jews spread all over Europe. The medieval church taught that Jews were to be blamed for the death of Jesus Christ. It sowed anti-Semitic ideas and provoked undue violence against Jews. In 1096 for example, the crusaders who set off across Europe to reclaim the holy land from Islamic control, viciously attacked the Jewish communities which they passed by.  

Along with Christian belief came the folk ideas of Jews as evil. It pictured Jews with horns and forked tails or as reptiles. It spread the false myth that Jews killed Christian babies for their blood, to make special bread. The Jews therefore were forced to leave the countries, were driven out from city to city, forced to convert to Christianity or be killed and were made outcasts. The fourth Lateran Council passed a decree that the Jews had to wear something distinctive from Christians in 1215. It was either a hat or a star or something similar to it. In Germany, the Jews who were valued as merchants from 4^th C flew to settle in northern, central and Eastern Europe. In Spain, the Jews who enjoyed a Golden age during Islamic rule were expelled under Christian rule in 1492. Throughout the middle ages, the Jews sought to escape outbursts of violence and expulsion from one land or another. Moreover, the medieval Church did not allow Jews to own land. The bishops and lords organized closed-off areas for Jews separating them from Christians. They were later named as Ghettos, an Italian word referring to a metal-casting foundry. Pope Paul IV restricted Jews to ghettos, in 1555-1559. It is around this time the state created the Venice Ghetto. The 16^th century France, had a high wall separating Jews from the rest of the people. In the Eastern Europe or Russia, there arose strong feeling against Jews in Russian cities and so Catherine the Great decided to move them out. In 1791, it created ‘Pale of Settlement’ the place where 90% of Russian Jews were entitled to live. Life in the settlement was one of poverty and hardship. There were also organized massacre of Jews in Russia. It was called as pogrom a Russian word literally meaning ‘devastation’.

The Jews had to wait for the period of enlightenment, to free them from the shackles of false prejudice, suffering and injustice. Towards the end of the 18^th century, many European countries abolished laws that discriminated against Jews. They were free to take part in varied aspects of European Society. Napoleon for example, abolished ghettos; restored the rights of Jews in France and in the other countries, he conquered.  Anti-Semitism however, was not fully abolished the Jews were persecuted in different pockets, 1905 about 3,000 Jews were murdered in some 600 pogroms. It had a major come back with the fascism of Adolf Hitler (1923).

Horror of Christian Prejudice 

The facts thus make plain the active role of Christian prejudice in the making of holocaust. It is more horrifying than the holocaust. Our neutral stance at the face of the Nazism further affirms this terrible truth. It is even more, scandalous to note that the methods and propaganda adapted by Nazi paradigm resemble the anti-Semitic activities of medieval Church.  Though the Church has apologized for its mistakes the simplistic interpretations, popular Christian beliefs and at times the subtle definitions of Christian faith seems to carry this bias to the Post-modern Christian generation. The problem is twofold: most of us fall easy-prey to this traditional anti-Semitic prejudice due to the sin-of-ignorance while few others deliberately stick on to the anti-Semitism blaming the Jews as responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. The former group needs urgent attention, as they unconsciously fall easy-prey to radicals. The cure however happens through the painful process of introducing the faithful into a hermeneutical understanding of the Church and the Sacred Scripture. 

I would form, for example, very much part of the former group as the religious nun ignorantly sowed anti-Semitism, educating me in the belief that the Jews shunned messiah and killed him. Catholic priests, a majority of them further strengthened such erroneous conception through their uninformed interpretation of Scripture, in particular the Gospels. My conversion happened in one of my conversations with my professor of theology who helped me deconstruct the inherent anti-Semitic bias from the New Testament and other interpretations. How unjust and unchristian it is to promote such bias against Jews.

The Church generally tags the latter group as ‘heretical’ with the growing concern for inter-religious dialogue. However, the pro-Jewish stance of the Church is still unconvincing with one or the other offhand remarks by the inner-circle of Vatican.

Let not history repeat itself, let us then correct every form of anti-Semitism, more especially in our reading of Gospels (we tend to forget that they were written nearly 60 years after the death of Jesus, by probably men who tried to please Romans hence blamed Jews for the killing of Jesus Christ) accept responsibility for the blood of our neighbour, and love them as one self.  


Basic Bibliography:
Gluck Wood, Angela. Holocaust: The Events and Their Impact on Real People. London: Dorling Kindersley, 2007.
Moroschan, Jonathan. "Religious Anti-Semitism: Anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church." 
  http://jonathan-moroschan.suite101.com/religious-antisemitism-a56804